Picks for Labor and Trade Positions Disagree on Policy

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama has completed selections for his cabinet, and will nominate Representative Hilda L. Solis, Democrat of California, as his labor secretary and Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas, as his trade representative, transition aides said.

The appointments are expected to be announced Friday at Mr. Obama’s final news conference before he heads to Hawaii for a Christmas break. Mr. Obama is also expected to formally announce his nomination of Representative Ray LaHood, Republican of Illinois, for transportation secretary.

The nominations will cap a flurry of appointments in the past week as Mr. Obama raced to fill his 15-person cabinet before the holiday week. Among remaining vacancies on Mr. Obama’s team, all are non-cabinet posts, most prominently top intelligence jobs, with Mr. Obama still not settled on a new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and apparently not ready to announce the expected appointment of Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral, as director of national intelligence.

With his choices of a labor secretary and a trade representative, Mr. Obama appears to have sought to appeal to each side in the battle over free trade. Ms. Solis, a longtime labor advocate who is of Central American heritage, has been skeptical about free-trade agreements, while Mr. Kirk, a lawyer with a political bent, comes from the Texas establishment and has spoken out in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

As mayor of Dallas in 2000, Mr. Kirk was among a group of political leaders who called for permanently normalizing trade relations with China, saying that “you’re either a part of the global economic community or you’re going to be left out of it.”

Although Mr. Obama said in his primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton that Nafta should be re-negotiated, he did not emphasize that approach during the general election campaign. Free-trade proponents remain hopeful that Mr. Obama will moderate his stance, as his predecessors did, now that he has been elected president.

“We are very pleased at Kirk’s selection, and we look forward to working with him,” said Julia K. Hughes, senior vice president for the United States Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel. “He has been an outspoken free trade advocate, and as mayor of Dallas, recognizes the positive economic impact from trade agreements.”

Labor activists who would speak only on condition of anonymity expressed wariness about Mr. Kirk, but made clear their strong support for Ms. Solis, a close ally of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Ms. Solis was first elected to Congress in 2000 and represents a largely Hispanic and Asian district of working-class suburbs east of Los Angeles as well as part of East Los Angeles.

A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials said they pushed her name for labor secretary soon after Mr. Obama was elected, although her name did not rise to the fore until several other leading candidates — including David Bonior, a former House whip, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas — withdrew their names or were ruled out.

Ms. Solis has championed a bill, called the Employee Free Choice Act, that is the No. 1 priority of organized labor because it would make it far easier to unionize workers. The business community bitterly opposes the bill. She is the only member of Congress on the board of American Rights at Work, a pro-union group pushing for the bill.

“We’re thrilled at the prospect of having Representative Hilda Solis as our nation’s next labor secretary,” said John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “We’re confident that she will return to the Labor Department one of its core missions: to defend workers’ basic rights in our nation’s workplaces. She’s proven to be a passionate leader and advocate for all working families.”

“We’re disappointed that she supports the Employee Free Choice Act,” said Randel K. Johnson, the vice president of labor policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “We expected Obama to pick someone supported by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. She’s not a pick whose philosophy we didn’t expect. We will disagree with her on some issues and work with her on some.”

Ms. Solis is a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the House Committee on Natural Resource and the new House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Mr. Obama has also settled on John P. Holdren, a Harvard physicist best known as a proponent of cutting emissions of heat-trapping gasses, intensifying energy research and limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, as his science adviser, said two people close to Dr. Holdren. Mr. Obama is expected to make that announcement in his radio address on Saturday.

Dr. Holdren advised the Obama campaign on climate and energy issues this year. The nomination was first described Thursday on the ScienceInsider blog of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Another scientist, Jane Lubchenco, an Oregon State University marine biologist and an advocate for ocean conservation and action on global warming, has been tapped to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees much of the country’s research on climate.

Andrew C. Revkin contributed reporting from New York.

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